The Unfiltered Delight of an 1885 North Cascades Trek
Before the North Cascades were fully mapped, a party of thirty-three Seattleites scrambled up a peak near the Nooksack River for a view that they hoped would 'soon' become a national treasure.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Your correspondent made the ascent of Mount Whatcom on Tuesday with a party of thirty-three ladies and gentlemen, married and single. The party gathered at Port Whatcom, whence the climb commenced at 8:00 A.M.; all being in camp, a half mile from the summit, by 2:30 P.M. An Indian boy carried up the blankets and heavier luggage, and the goal was gained without accident of any kind. It was voted that a committee of ladies look after the edibles, another the laying of the cloth, etc., and that dinner should be had at 4:00 P.M. Precisely at the hour named, the bell sounded—a lot of tin cups banging on a string—the invention of Mr. S., and thirty-three hungry tourists formed a circle round a mountain fire.
Immediately after dinner was cleared away, the baskets of provisions were hung up on trees and the party started for the summit. Arriving there after an easy walk, everybody was enchanted. The view on all sides is one of the most exquisite in the United States. All around us, in bird’s-eye view, stretched away oceans, channels, and the Nooksack country. Mount Baker and the Canadian range formed a huge background, due east of us. At our feet the innumerable islands of the archipelago and British possessions finished in all directions... To the south could plainly be seen the entrance into Port Townsend and the Olympic range. To the west, Victoria and the mountains of Vancouver and its dependent islands. Away to the north towered the Rockies over the Fraser river and behind Port Moody.
If only the settler wanting land could have seen what we saw on Tuesday evening—the vast foothills under Mount Baker neither taken up nor developed, the thousands of acres still on these islands—he would soon have made up his mind, first, that he had plenty to choose from, and, secondly, where to choose.
“The view on all sides is one of the most exquisite in the United States. All around us, in bird’s-eye view, stretched away oceans, channels, and the Nooksack country.”
This 1885 account captures the pioneer-era mindset of viewing the wilderness as 'unclaimed' and 'undeveloped' assets, a perspective that catalyzed the rapid transformation of the Pacific Northwest. Today, the same mountains are cherished as protected landscapes, though the tension between recreation, conservation, and the human hunger for a 'foothold' in the region remains a defining feature of the Seattle experience.
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